rear indeed are the three - the bith as a human being, even after
bith,
desire for liberation and even having that association with a
realized
soul to help are very rare indeed and only the result the grace
of the
Lord.

Neither by yoga(bhakti,karma, j~naana), or by intellctual
analysis,
neither by action nor education that one can gain
liberation. Only by
the teaching of oneness of the oneself with the infiniteness that
one
cna gain moksha.

Hari OM!
Sadananda

AN APPRAISAL

Balancing Reason and Emotion in Twin Towers
Void

By HERBERT MUSCHAMP

Complete article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/arts/design/06DESI.html?ex=1045198800&en=850643f050b3f365&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
(link may no longer be working.)

Click on the Interactive Feature to see architectural
designs and to hear the architects describe their purpose and
vision.

Taken together as a kind of shotgun diptych, the two designs
chosen as finalists by the Lower Manhattan Development
Corporation illustrate the confusion of a nation torn between the
conflicting impulses of war and peace.

Daniel Libeskind's project for the World Trade Center site is
a startlingly aggressive tour de force, a war memorial to a
looming conflict that has scarcely begun. The Think team's
proposal, on the other hand, offers an image of peacetime
aspirations so idealistic as to seem nearly unrealizable.

A novel about a literature student in love? Well, why not? We
had A.S. Byatt's "Possession," and that did just fine
for us, even if it was about the usually dry subject of the lives
of literature teachers and critics.

So here's Pico Iyer's "Abandon," which the publisher
subtitles on the cover "A Romance," starring a Brit,
John Macmillan, on a grant to study in Santa Barbara with one of
the world's renowned scholars of Sufi poetry, and only the year
to write his thesis on the work of the great Sufi poet Rumi. Feel
the tension building? It's not your average person's variety of
suspense.

But then Sufi poetry isn't your average person's variety of
verse. "Woozy, we drain the glass/ Again; then again;
again./ 'We're not ourselves,' you say. / 'We never were,' I
answer." Even mock-Sufi poetry, of which there is a good
amount in this novel, for reasons of plot I do not want to spoil
by revealing, sounds like Emily Dickinson high on grass.

Macmillan, a reader of Persian who is already stoned on Sufi
art, scarcely knows what hits him when he meets the enigmatic
Camilla, who knows more about his subject than she lets on and
leads him deliciously astray. He's a sophisticated traveler,
running errands at the drop of a hat for his main professor, the
erudite and himself quite enigmatic Iranian scholar in exile
Javad Sefadhi, flying off to Syria and India and Spain for a few
days here and there. But nothing he does gives him more pleasure
than tooling around the hills east of Santa Barbara or driving up
into the Santa Cruz Mountains with his new beloved.

The young English student's love of California is almost as
great as his attraction to Camilla and is in evidence every time
Iyer turns his hand at drawing the landscape. "As they
turned onto Painted Cave Road," he writes, "an ancient
canyon on one side, poison oak, thick trees, a gurgling stream on
the bottom, they were taken farther from the world than ever, the
road closing in on them on both sides and the rocks above
enforcing a kind of sovereignty. The switchbacks were harsh, and
up above, when they stopped beside the canyon, the markings in
the Chumash cave showed scorpions, circles, snakes. Whatever you
might believe about California was here, on this shaded road: the
ancient signs, the open bright sky. Farther up, nothing but
rolling hills and mountains in the distance, Cachuma Lake blue in
the sultry afternoon."

And at first Camilla seems to fit right in, a prototypical
California girl, a pretty erratic geist to Macmillan's quickly
running out zeit, remaining as elusive as a fabled new Sufi
manuscript that the young scholar has been searching for all
around the world. She arrives at his apartment early, early in
the morning, stays a day or so, and then disappears for a while.
The fault lies in her childhood, she seems to imply. "All
the time I was growing up," she tells John, "I was
always sure I was going to be abandoned." And she lets on
that he abandons her for his work, a situation that allows Iyer
to play on the double idea of abandonment -- describing both
deser-

tion and rapture, religious and sexual -- throughout the
novel. The closer he feels toward her, the more she moves away.
The closer she would like to be, the sooner he's off on another
world journey.

Which is not a bad rhythm to employ when dramatizing the ups
and downs, the come-hithers and the keep-your-distances of a
contemporary love affair, and not a bad metaphor to invoke when
dramatizing a young literary sleuth's quest for certain meaning
in manuscripts in an old language about ambiguous theological
matters. At some distance, meaning seems authentic. Draw close,
and the letters and meaning blur.

It's probably best to read Iyer's novel in that light, as a
desertion of realism (because graduate work has never been this
much fun or interesting or laden with so much intrigue) and as a
rapturous narrative about the pains and pleasures of serious
affection. It's the perfect gift for young scholars in any field,
tied with a bow by the prolific world traveler Pico Iyer.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not
our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask
ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you
not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing
small does not serve the world. There is
nothing enlightened about shrinking so that
other people will not feel insecure around you.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God
that is within us. It is not in just some of
us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own
light shine, we unconsciously give people
permission to do the same. As we are liberated
from our own fear, our presence automatically
liberates others."

whatever perceived
in the neural network soap
life is but a dream
on a never ending cruise
with nobody at the wheel

Siraca
NDS

In the heart of life, if we pause long enough, go deep enough
to
listen, we may hear the beating, the rhythmic pounding of life's
very
essence, of our fears, joys, longings, hopes, dreams,
nightmares...
In the heart of life lies a steady pulse, a never ceasing rhythm
of
all that exists - has ever existed - of all that we have created
out
of our collective imaginings in this obscure bubble of time and
space. We move through it, finding our way, making our
choices, at
times simply giving in to the rhythm itself, allowing it to
cradle
us, allowing us - if only for one brief moment - to just be... to
feel the timelessness of our very
existence.